Schools that wiped out data the most take academic dive

Report card (partial) database

Columbus school attendance scandal

Columbus City Schools employees -- and perhaps others in schools throughout the state -- are accused of falsifying students' records to improve their schools' standing on state report cards. Read the complete series.

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The Columbus schools that deleted the most student attendance records last year posted dramatic
academic declines after the practice was halted this year, according to test-passing rates that the
state released yesterday on school report cards.

At East High School, which deleted more absences than any other Columbus school during the
2010-11 school year, passing rates on the reading section of the Ohio Graduation Test plunged by
23.5 percentage points; only 50.5 percent of students passed the exam in March. In fact, passing
rates in all subjects took a dive at East.

East performed much better during the 2010-11 school year, the same year that 41,670 student
absences were deleted, possibly as part of a practice that also can throw out poor-performing
students’ test scores.

Of the five other high schools with the greatest number of record changes in 2010-11, all saw
significant drops in passing rates, most of them in double digits.

Some other schools that didn’t make large numbers of changes did not show such dramatic swings
in passing rates.

Superintendent Gene Harris forbade principals in June from retroactively altering
student-attendance records without proper documentation and a legitimate reason. District officials
said they can’t explain whether the steep drop in test performance occurred because schools stopped
changing data.

“I don’t know that we can say that definitively,” said district spokesman Jeff Warner. “I think
we have to get into the data and look at it. ”

It was a longstanding practice in Toledo schools to alter student-attendance data; the district
withdrew students who had many absences so that it wouldn’t have to include their test scores in
school report-card tallies. But when the district briefly ended the practice, academic results
faltered.

Warner said Columbus is awaiting the final word from the state auditor, who is conducting a
statewide investigation of student-data changes. That investigation is the reason that, yesterday,
the state released a slimmed-down version of Ohio’s school report cards, with key portions of data
absent.

District leaders question how helpful the information is without the overall ratings.

“Based on the format, community members would need to spend a significant amount of time with
the data to gain any valuable insights,” South-Western school Superintendent Bill Wise said.

Still, the limited release did offer some glimpses of the highs and lows of last school year’s
academic progress.

For example, Columbus City Schools now has the best graduation rate (75.8 percent) of any of
Ohio’s “Big 8” urban districts. But the district lost ground on passing rates for every subject of
the Ohio Graduation Test.

And the district overall failed to offer students at least a year’s worth of learning last
school year, although some individual schools did.

The Ohio Department of Education emphasized yesterday that the data aren’t final and could
change. Only one school district that was accused of manipulating student data has been
investigated and punished. Lockland near Cincinnati had its report-card grade downgraded as a
result. State education officials truncated the report cards out of fear of publishing undeserved
grades and then having to issue new ones.

The full report cards were to be released on Aug. 29. State Auditor Dave Yost has said his
investigation likely won’t be done this year, so it could be a while until a full set of data is
made public.

• Thirty-nine of central Ohio’s 49 school districts improved their graduation rates from the
class of 2010 to the class of 2011. Most of central Ohio’s school districts met the state’s minimum
graduation-rate requirement of 90 percent; only 13 missed the mark.

• Central Ohio charter schools fared poorly on graduation rates; none met the 90 percent
minimum. The highest rate in the region came from the Arts and College Preparatory Academy, where
88.1 percent of the class of 2011 graduated on time. The vast majority of charter high schools here
serve students who have dropped out of school, are at risk of dropping out or have special
needs.

• Central Ohio districts continued to struggle on the fifth-grade math exam, which was a problem
for students during the 2010-11 school year, too. Last school year, 49.5 percent of districts met
the state’s passing-rate minimum of 75 percent on the fifth-grade math test; the year before, 44.3 p
ercent met that standard.

• Twenty-eight districts statewide will have their overall grades reduced because they failed to
make at least a year’s worth of gains on a measure called “value-added growth” for two straight
years. This is the first year that districts and schools can have their ratings lowered after only
two school years of below-expected gains; it used to take three straight years before ratings could
be affected.

Only one local district — Madison-Plains — will have its overall grade (once it’s announced)
lowered for this reason. So will Cleveland and Toledo. Conversely, 216 districts (some in central
Ohio) could get a boost in the ratings because they provided students more than a year’s worth of
learning.

Parents already have received test-score information for their own children, and schools already
have student-level data. Some school districts, including Hilliard, used yesterday’s data release
to announce their expected ratings. Hilliard thinks it’s headed for an A-plus. Other educators say
they think they know what grade their district will receive but are trying to decide how to share
that information with their communities.

“To have what we believe is an A-plus rating, we’re very happy with it, and we’ll share it with
an asterisk,” Reynoldsburg Superintendent Steve Dackin said.

Groveport Madison appears to have earned an A grade for the second year in a row, but officials
are wary of celebrating.

“It’s huge to have this in the beginning of the year to tell the community what programs are
working,” Superintendent Bruce Hoover said. “The delay on getting that out to the community has a
huge impact on us, especially when you’re looking at issues like a levy or bond issue.”